The Great War to the Great Beach: Face-to-Face with Death

THIS IS THE THIRD INSTALLMENT IN A SERIES about Henry Beston, author of the Cape Cod nature classic, The Outermost House, and his service in World War I, which began 100 years ago.

It had only four months since Henry Sheahan, who would later come to be known as Henry Beston, author of The Outermost House, left the comforts of Quincy, Massachusetts, and arrived in France to serve as an ambulance driver in France’s battle with Germany in “The Great War.” It wasn’t long after he was transferred to the Bois-le-Pretre (the Priest’s Woods) that he would be introduced to the worst that the conflict, later to be known as World War I,” had to offer.

“He’d been closer to it than a lot of people — they put him on the front lines because he spoke fluent French,” said writer Gary Lawless, who has also been the caretaker for Beston’s “Chimney Farm” in Nobleboro, Maine, since 1986. “He saw some awful stuff — wholesale slaughter and just that indifference to human pain and suffering.”

On his way to the front, Beston met up with a French soldier, who wanted to know where the U.S. stood when it came to the war.

“The soldier was very, very anxious to hear what the people in the United States thought,” noted Beston biographer Daniel Payne. “‘Do they think we’ll win the war? Will the United States enter the war?’ He and Henry talked at some length about American attitudes in the war.”

“Just then, they hear a shell coming in. They dive for cover, it passes and explodes nearby …”

As Henry described the scene in his book, A Volunteer Poilu: “I saw the sentry crumple up in the mud. I was the first to get to him. A chunk of the shell had ripped open the left breast to the heart. Down his sleeve, as down a pipe, flowed a hasty drop, drop, drop of blood that mixed with the mire.”

Payne described Beston’s “rather grim jest” following the incident: “All the American volunteers had a two-week crash course in identifying shells. At the end of the two weeks, those who passed the course went to the funeral of those who didn’t.”

Four months later, Beston would be transferred to the front at Verdun, a fortified city in the French interior. What awaited him there was what would later be referred to as “the greatest battle in the history of the world.” His journey through hell was only beginning.

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Blog Author

Don Wilding

Don Wilding is the executive director and co-founder of the Henry Beston Society, a non-profit organization promoting the works and philosophies of the author of "The Outermost House." A veteran of 28 years of working for newspapers in ... Read Full